1: someone who follows and admires a leader2: someone who helps the person who leads a church service

How do you use it?

The leader has his detractors, but he had a large group of acolytes hanging on his every word.

Are you a word wiz?

"Acolyte" comes to us from two Greek roots. What do you think those roots mean?

A. "church" and "helper"

B. "not" and "servant"

C. "together" and "path"

D. "leader" and "detractor"

"Acolyte" comes to us ultimately from the Greek roots "a-" or "ha-," meaning "together," and "keleuthos," meaning "path." Those two roots were combined to give us the Greek word "akolouthos"--the name for a person who assists a priest during a Christian church service. So how did "akolouthos" end up in English as "acolyte"? It became "acolyte" by being borrowed and respelled by a number of languages before it ended up in English. Each language has its own way of spelling certain sounds. Medieval Latin spelled "akolouthos" as "acoluthus," and then in Anglo-French "acoluthus" was spelled "acolit." The Anglo-French spelling was taken into Middle English, where it was given the spelling we use today: "acolyte."